Dementia is caused by multiple diseases, most commonly Alzheimers disease, and cannot yet be cured. If we could improve the way to detect important biological processes that lead to dementia, with so-called biomarkers, we can better understand and monitor the underlying diseases, target the disease processes, and diagnose patients. This requires development of technologies to detect and track biomarkers in patients and assess the effect of new therapies. We apply innovative technologies to assess key biological processes affected in dementia (CHIME markers), to develop a framework for non-invasive testing of pharmaceuticals that provide relief in early stages of neurological diseases.

Heartbeat and respiration not only supply our brains with oxygen, they also cause pulsatile tissue motion, which drives brain waste clearance (removal of waste products generated by metabolic processes in the brain). This proposal combines new MRI methods with advanced computational models to use this brain motion as source of information regarding tissue properties, blood vessels and waste clearance.

Although the management of large artery stroke has been revolutionized, management of patients with more distal occlusions and transient ischemic attack (TIA) is lagging behind in technological developments and its application. This group comprises 70% of all patients presenting with ischemic stroke symptoms. We propose to significantly improve their prognosis by: 1) Early detecting and characterisation of thrombo-embolic sources on admission through evaluation of the heart and internal carotid arteries with Spectral CTA; 2) Improving early recognition of small volume stroke on admission with high-resolution CT-perfusion; 3) Improving risk assessment for recurrent stroke in small volume stroke and TIA patients by adding imaging of thrombo-embolic sources to currently used clinical risk scores.

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